“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

—Jonathan Swift

___________________________________________________"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital."- Bill Maher___________________________________________________

"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

This is definitely nitpicking, but I noticed yesterday's AGR Monday briefing doesn't actually mention any names:

And the ugly

Just when you thought Congress couldn't get any clumsier, we see the new Democratic majority stumbling badly.

It's only 12 years since the Dems had control of the place, compared to Republicans' 40-year wilderness experience prior to taking control of Congress in January 1995.

The presumptive speaker of the House showed that she couldn't count votes in backing the losing candidate for majority leader. She reportedly is preparing to install a disgraced former federal judge as head of the Select Committee on Intelligence. She is feuding openly with other congressional leaders.

If the new ruling congressional Democrats are going to change the tone of debate in Washington, they should start by changing the tone of debate among those in their own party.

The cynic in me wants to believe that this somehow helps in the effort to shape public opinion in favor of the Republicans, but more than that I just thought it was kind of odd.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

It seems as if no right-winger at the Amarillo Globe-News shall be left untouched by the November madness. Even Mr. Van Camp, ever the reliable, unwavering, certified crank, has gone off the deep end. But unlike his fellow reactionaries he has, for a shocking, glimmering moment, started making some sense.

After years of following the conservative line on penal punishment, believing the death penalty too lenient for the crime of double parking, he has suddenly gone all bleeding-heart liberal for prison reform, wanting humane treatment of prisoners instead of drawing and quartering, rehabilitation instead of a living damnation in steel-barred tombs.

Why this sudden change of (one does not use "heart" to describe a small flinty cinder) attitude? We need not attribute this unexpected turn to some errant liberal enlightenment or Christian charity. It comes from a simple, traditional Republican principle: the sincere conviction that convicted relatives should not suffer like others in the big house.

This is a touching Republican family value. Where once Mr. Van Camp would condemn judges for leniency in sentencing the great unwashed to lifetimes of hard labor he now finds it overly harsh that his own kin is condemned to a soft bunk for a handful of years. He worries that in a penitentiary full of habitually violent Black and Hispanic dope fiends a White family member victimized by alcohol and an unsympathetic judicial system must now live with these savage menaces to society.

Our instant reformer does find hope however, hope in sweet Jesus, in the tender mercy of redemption offered by a faith-based ministry. But this salvation is threatened by the damnable ACLU, which challenges God on the piffling grounds of “separation of church and state.” It is endangered as well by Van Camp’s detested Muslims, who are given access to these incarcerated souls and allowed to preach jihad and hatred against the United States.

Here at last Van Camp redeems himself, regaining his normal insanity and giving let to his celebrated bigotry. Divorced from reality he takes no notice that the objection to these faith-based ministries is a Constitutional one, that taxpayer funds and government power are being used to establish de facto churches within the hoosegow. Inmates are forced to participate in sectarian programs to gain the privilege of rehabilitation and early release; they are coerced to convert to an evangelical Christianity hostile to other faiths, including other Christian denominations, even Methodists. This is all contrary to First Amendment rights that cannot be lawfully denied, even if limited, in the confines of the pen.

What Van Camp does see is political correctness in allowing other faiths in the prisons, especially Islam. From an isolated incident he perceives a vast Islamic conspiracy to penetrate the penal system and recruit new jihadists. Muslims in the slammer are a danger to the safe deliverance of his blood and kin.

It is admittedly a tiny window opened on the small mind of a public racist, but there is more to Van Camp’s reflexive assumption and a bald assertion that all Muslims preach hate against our country. Van Camp’s hostility toward Islam is not only that in his narrow-minded view Islam has declared war against the West, but that he considers Islam an inferior culture and Muslims an inferior race. With his repeated calls for the indiscriminate killings of Muslim men, women and children, were he not a regular columnist he would be considered a sociopath and fast-tracked for the psycho ward (in a civilized community).

Where does this unflinching hatred come from? Why do his eyes bug out constantly straining at the end of his editor’s choke-chain? With the Amarillo Globe-News now Bedlam itself no proper shrink will ever examine him, so we must make our diagnosis from the evidence at hand like kindly Doctor Frist.

It is a given that racism is a learned behavior. Those that cling to it feel inferior and must constantly reassure themselves others are inferior to feel superior. But nursing hatred comes from something deeper. Van Camp hates the Japanese, his enemy in the war, and while we could believe he hates them for what they did to other soldiers at Bataan or in the camps, he is forgiving of the Germans, so it is more likely racist or personal, just as prison reform is personal.

And what could be more personal than a humiliation that now must be forever visited back upon his inferiors? We now enter Doctor Frist’s domain of actively responsive permanently vegetative state of speculative hypothesis.

Out of those long dull air patrols throughout the war there was a single bombing run. In that moment of inescapable fear was a youth’s early manhood suddenly stripped away? Not by the dry mouth of fright or the paralysis of terror, but by the beaten bed-wetter’s horrible secret? Did the gunner completely wet his pants in battle?

However it happened, Van Camp is still a big fan of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His friends want it dropped on the all the Islamic nations. Need we wonder why?

Sunday, November 19, 2006

The prattling parrots of punditry are still at it, claiming Democrats have no plan for Iraq, no plan for this, no plan for that. Well last month that raving liberal the AGN suffers to occasionally publish presented his plan to the Democratic Club. This writer managed to acquire a copy. Take that Mrs. Crumbly!

Potter-Randall Democratic Club October 23, 2006 The Iraq War, Poisoned American Politics and Cranky Columnists: A SolutionErik V. Williams

The election is in just a matter of days, so if there are any doubts about which candidate or proposition to vote for my family tradition is to follow the newspaper’s recommendations, to carefully read and scrutinize them, and then vote just the opposite. Unless there’s a Democrat. I don’t know how a Democrat got endorsed by the Globe-News but vote for him!

My talk is titled “The Iraq War, Poisoned American Politics and Cranky Columnists: A Solution.” It has been quite some time since I’ve given a political speech, so I hope you will bear with me.

My last political speech, or as any liberal speech is labeled today -- tirade -- was in front of the American Legion Women’s Auxiliary in Los Angeles. If any of you have read my writing you might imagine that my audience, after the initial pleasantries, were soon on the edge of their seats, hanging on every word, and after I had finished sat there in astonished silence. Then came a burst of excitement! Now, whatever may be said about the genteel ladies of the American Legion Women’s Auxiliary and their tea and lemon cake, let me assure you they know a thing or two about tar and feathers.

How many here believe that American patriotism is identical to militarism, to supporting the president’s war policies without question? Anyone? Good. Then maybe we won’t be repeating the last episode.

However much we have been against the Iraq war there is no denying that the invasion of Iraq was an absolute success. America’s shores are not threatened by Saddam Hussein or by his weapons of mass destruction. That Saddam Hussein posed no threat and had no weapons of mass destruction is, of course, a trivial detail.

This whopping mistake about WMD has been attributed to a massive intelligence failure, or in the White House a massive intelligence absence. But while this Republican administration has emphasized accountability, there is only one person responsible for George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s mistaken belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Bill Clinton. He said they were there; it’s Clinton’s fault.

As the Iraq war has gone from bad to worse, and each rationale put forward by the White House has worn thin and been replaced by a new one, we hear that the majority of Americans has come to believe that Iraq was a “right-turn,” a diversion from the war on terrorism.

I propose that this belief is mistaken. We know that before his election George Bush’s ambition was to be a “great president” by fighting a great war. Just weeks after his inauguration his administration began planning regime change in Iraq, and in the immediate wake of 9/11 he was determined to pin the attack on Saddam Hussein. The course for Baghdad had been set. With or without 9/11 we would be in Iraq. It is awful to recognize that 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan was the detour and that the war on terrorism was for George W. Bush a distraction.

Certainly it is troubling to think that an event that affected us all, which so unified the nation, was incidental to our president. Bush’s refrain has been that “9/11 changed everything.” Obviously it changed his war plans, but 9/11 also furthered them, and when the Taliban had been routed, and Osama Ben Laden had slipped away, he quickly returned to his objective of invading Iraq.

More terrible is that the Iraq war, Bush’s crowning achievement should, through his own hubris and incompetence, end up a complete shambles. Still one must admit it has been a great success redistributing wealth from taxpayers to needy corporations. If only it had not so miserably failed. The people we went to save from fear of one man now fear all men. The people we went to save from torture and butchery in secret places are now tortured and butchered in the streets.

A car bomb rips through a market and an Iraqi man, standing in the middle of the carnage, screams that Americans think of them as less than dogs. In Amarillo people are outraged, outraged over the death of a sheltie killed by a pitbull. Citizens complain they feel tortured by Hell Week and terrorized by egg throwing juveniles who toilet paper their homes. These are the people who bully us to “stay the course”?

This is the stubborn formula for victory, from the farcical “Mission Accomplished” through the insurgency to sectarian death squads, a long bloody march after a distant and ever receding triumph. Yet the believers continue to berate us ever more stridently that if we stifle our criticism and unite behind the effort, through sheer force of will we shall prevail.

Why is this unity absent? It is not just the nature of the war. We were given a choice, as one Republican acquaintance put it before the invasion of Iraq: “you either trust them, or they’re liars.” Republicans damned themselves out of their own mouths, yet after the lies have been piled higher and deeper, we are still expected to trust and obediently follow.

Others wish we could recapture the unity we had after 9/11. Even then our unity was under assault. In January 2002 Karl Rove told Republicans they could run on their record of anti-terrorism. The White House politicized terrorism, used a national crisis for partisan political gain, yet Democrats were saddled with partisanship and dividing the country.

9/11 had already been used as a political cudgel. Remember Jerry Falwell and his rant about abortionists and gays? Have we forgotten that while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others were blaming who for the attack? Not the terrorists. Bill Clinton.

This “blame game” Republicans do not play has been going on from the beginning. In their view this war could be won but for dissent, and every disagreement makes it that much harder to win. A war supporter blasts a writer who blames Bush for the killed and wounded, then blames liberal critics for every soldier that gets shot. A columnist deflects anti-Muslim remarks made by a Pentagon officer by saying the insurgents don’t read the papers, then condemns anti-war statements as treasonous because the terrorists read newspapers.

Now the president of Iran is the newest member of the Hitler-of-the-month club, and anyone who has ever criticized military policy are “appeasers.” Jihad is transformed into Islamofascism, an ideology seeking world domination just as atheist communism once did. The war against terrorism is, we are told, a new kind of war, but it is couched in the old Cold War rhetoric: Democrats are weak on defense; if Democrats are elected we shall be blown to little bits; Democrats are behind the nation’s disunity.

With the election coming up there are indications the Democrats may regain control of the House of Representatives. Should this happen many hope we shall finally turn the corner on this travesty, that it will lead to investigations of the White House, even to the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. I caution against such a hope, as many miracles, from the indictment of Karl Rove to the collapse of the Republican machine from corruption and sex scandals, have not materialized.

If the new congress were to consider impeachment they will still be confronted by hostile Republicans and a right-wing media that, when in a good mood, think liberals should be executed occasionally to keep the rest cowed, that San Francisco should be targeted by terrorists and hope New York City gets nuked. Many seem to think it’s not a bad idea to exterminate a billion people so they won’t have to take their shoes off at the airport. You get the feeling that Mr. “I think I speak for every American cause I watch FOX news and know the truth” might get a little touchy about impeaching the man God made president.

And while we are trying to do that every catastrophe in Iraq, every terrorist attack that Bush neglects to stop, will be blamed on Democrats, while our men and women are fighting and dying overseas. We want to bring them home, not in 2010, but as soon as possible, and that is not going to happen with Republicans in power. But we also should not abandon the Iraqi people to terrorists and death squads. It would become a regional catastrophe, and it would be all Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

So I have a proposal. I call it “The Republicans to Iraq Exchange Program.” We bring our troops home and in their place we send in 16 million rabid Republicans who supported the war. Bush gets his “so long as I’m dictator” wish, Cheney will have no bag limit on lawyers and Rick Santorum can keep digging for WMD.

To protect them there will be 2 million heavily armed Imperial Republican Guardsmen drawn from our fierce warrior elite -- the NRA. The government will be given daily reality checks by the Ministry of Information’s Rush Limbaugh and the FOX News network. Pat Robertson can swap fundamentalist religion stories and compare Holy War notes with Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadly we may still hear of human rights abuses out of Abu Ghraib as suspected terrorists are tortured by Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin reading their latest columns.

Many of our neighbors will doubtless want to go, drawn by the prospect of the oil wealth to be had in a country that magically pays for its own invasion and reconstruction. The brochures and travel ads will say the insurgency is in its last throes, the rebuilding is making incredible progress, and around every corner Americans are greeted with flowers as liberators.

Here at home, freed from the oppressive bombast of the Right, the corrosive public discourse of Republicans, and the trampling of the Constitution by the administration, we will restore our liberties, our freedoms and our democracy. We will confront the real threats to our nation as a united people, as a free people.

And should we ever receive a plaintive call from the smirking pasha of Baghdad we will simply reply “You broke it, Mister, you own it.”

An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's breakthrough documentary about global warming, will be screened this Sunday, November 19, 3:00 pm at the Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 4901 Cornell (across from Bonham Middle School). All are invited to attend this rallying cry for action on the issue of global warming.

And don't miss the interview with Al Gore in the latest GQ. Asked about the warnings before 9/11 that He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken ignored:

But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!

Let's hope the majority Dems can find half the fire that Al has kindled.

If you're interested in exploring the relationship between science and religion, join a discussion led by Arthur Francis on "Religious Naturalism", beginning at 9:45 Sunday morning at the Unitarian Fellowship.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Whenever I've gone to the Department of Public Safety (what we call the DMV in Texas), I've gotten exactly what I needed: a card that says I can drive.

Not so from our corrupted and wrecked health care system.

Our district changed insurance providers at the beginning of the school year. I was pleased because our old district policy was . . . well, to call it Kafka-esque would imply that there were functionaries and bureaucrats somewhere doing something, if only maneuvering reams of red tape. But there weren't. The system wasn't a brick wall; it was a huge red pile that had once been a brick wall.

A previous employer had used our new provider ten years ago and I had been very happy with their service then.

But no one, no one, in health care provides good service anymore.

Four months and numerous calls into the school year I have yet to get so much as an insurance card.

So, yeah, I'd rather get my health care from the DMV. At least I'd get carded.

Slow summer days are the traditional time of year for the silly season but now, right after the mid-term elections, the Amarillo Globe-News has opened it a tad late by giving front page coverage to remote viewing.

Remote viewing is the putative paranormal ability to describe a place from a great distance, usually from the comfort of the seer’s own home. It is pure, unadulterated psychic bunk, but the Globe-News has gone for it hook, line and sinker. The first line: “Lori Lambert-Williams isn’t a psychic.” The rest is extrasensory doggerel wrapped in discredited pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo.

What shall we witness next, snake handlers in the Faith Section, palm readers in the Business Section? Oh, wait, wasn’t that last week?

Should we be surprised the Globe cannot distinguish between fact and fantasy, that it has presented self-delusion as true? Granted, publishing delusion and fantasy is hardly a departure for Republican boot-lickers and robotic parrots of NewsMax and FrontPage, but outside the mental derangement of the White House shrubbery this is truly crack brained.

Perhaps the stressful conflict of reality and fantasy, of being a right-wing mouthpiece while posing as an unbiased legitimate newspaper has simply taken its toll, and with the passing of the election it has become time for a little vacation in the rubber room.

It certainly must be depressing to remain staunchly, rabidly conservative, the “historic voice” of the newspaper still gamboling in the antebellum south, yet still be hammered as a liberal rag for allowing the token appearance of modern opposing views.

What copywriter wouldn’t be strained by the gratuitous slobbering over experienced Republican candidates so deserving of election, cheerfully gloss over the inexperienced and endorse them simply because they are Republicans, then let one ragged Democrat slip through?

What editor wouldn’t eventually break from being conflicted, decrying hypocrisy in politics and condemning racism while playing the oligarch’s shill and providing a bigot a regular forum?

What former sports writer wouldn’t finally go off the rails, worried that five years of journalism school were wasted trying to discover what the pointy end of the pencil was for, gay bashing while anxious that his sputtering sperm had spawned a prancing pansy, and in the dead of sleepless nights fretting that no amount of Ten Commandment slabs on courthouse lawns will keep him from thinking that terrible, secret thought that there is no God?

Is it Thorazine time for the dearly demented who have been mainlining FOX and company these long years? One un-nerved soul, thrust into the national spotlight some time ago, pitched a fit over our fair citizens being portrayed as “hicks,” yet out of civic pride still conducts the parade of anti-science freaks, political schizophrenics and cultural psychotics unabated. Observers whose cerebral oxygen isn’t out-competed by cow flatulence might have good reason to look askance.

And let us top off this laughing stock with the proverbial diamond in a goat’s ass, The Center for the Performing Arts. Holzman Moss Architects are giggling their socks off dear Amarillo Globe-News, for those cattle-truck panels are a wicked joke, to make your patron cows feel right at home, and the yellow glass below is no sunset color but bovina piss, you guessed it right, splattered across your naked sky.

So what are we poor yokels to do, with our savvy newspaper done been had, gone off the deep end and our prize writers tailor-made for the straightjacket? Can we say Amarillo Globe-Enquirer?

Monday, November 13, 2006

I've been struggling with what I want to say about last week's elections. I've started and then deleted a few posts. They just didn't seem to be going anywhere. Yesterday morning the associate pastor at the church we occasionally attend gave me a topic (unintentionally) to address. It was a prayer he delivered, a prayer that left me in a sour mood the rest of the day. I don't recall the exact words, but the gist of it was something like this:

Did you get the message there? Now that the Democrats have a majority in Congress I guess this guy has his panties in a knot over gay marriage. He was upset, too, stuttering and fumbling with the words. Of all the horrible shit that goes on at home and abroad, much of which is a direct result of American politics, that's what compelled him to call out to God. I don't go to church very often, so maybe I've missed something. Maybe some other time he asked God to forgive us for the War we started in Iraq. Maybe some other time he asked forgiveness for the American greed that fuels so much misery around the world. He might have, but I kind of doubt it.

That moment in church would be the bitter part of last week's bittersweet victories, when you realize you're stuck in the fantasy land of the Reliable Republican.

"Conservatism" -- like "communism" -- has only one real definition, only one definition that matters: "that which 'conservatives' and the leaders they support do when in power." Conservatism is a set of principles about how government ought to function and the policies which political leaders should implement. And those principles can be known not by how they exist in some Platonic form, abstractly enshrined by think tank groups or in textbooks. One knows it by how its proponents -- "conservatives" -- actually govern and by who and what they support.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Cross-posted at kos:Thomas Paine, 1776, The CrisesTHESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph._________________

Got a minute? Remember November of 2000? Man, that time was just shit. Me? I had just spent 1 year doing 90 hour work weeks, and dropping every last dime I had (and then some!) helping to build a startup online business. Like many great companies we never received the second tranche of funding from our now skittish venture capitalists for marketing and operating that was expected the first two days of that month, and so it was over. We never opened a day for business. Out of work and in horrible debt. You wanna know something funny? 4th quarter 2006 was our projected first profitable quarter. Go figure . . .

Jobs were not so easy to find. Hiring freezes were everywhere, but I had a good buddy managing an upscale restaurant in Atlanta so I started waiting tables to keep the lights on in our little apartment my bride of one year and I shared.

Then that despicable, sickening, bullshit of a presidential election. Your gut remembers. . . The Brooks Brothers riot in Florida, James “the fixer” Baker, the Repubs running to the conservative-packed and therefore reliable, Supreme Court. The courts decision to stop counting the votes in Florida, and the installation of the Worst President Ever.

Worse, flipping through the news channels meant listening to the borg message. It was futile to resist. Every pundit was on board the wingnut train in 1st class. Radio was the same. Bush was a moderate. No liberal message ANYWHERE!

Sitting at the restaurant bar after a 14 hour day, the America that I grew up was unrecognizable. I felt alone. There were no liberals anymore.

Life changes. I found a decent job paying half of what I was making at the dot.bomb, but it was steady. And I had a great office looking out over the Chattahoochie river.

One early morning I watched a huge Russian cargo plane fly overhead bringing home the remains of that USAF surveillance plane that emergency landed in China. Wow . . . a RUSSIAN jet bringing pieces of an AMERICAN plane home and a corrupt American President kowtowing to China for hitting OUR plane! Why? So his Uncle Prescott could continue to make money?

Speaking of China, I got my $300 loan from them, which Bush described as a "Tax Cut" and the media raved about. Went right to the damn creditors.

One evening at home I on searched yahoo for “liberal radio” and “liberal website” on a whim.

The scales were removed from my eyes . . .

There were Liberals EVERYWHERE!

First up was IE America radio. When I heard Mike Malloy, I went nuts! This guy is saying what I am thinking! And it was streamed over the net and archived at whiterosesociety. WOO!

And the links! Bartcop, Atrios, MYDD (my due diligence back then) and more were jumping out every day. Next I knew I had 30 in my fav folder.

In the lead-up to Iraq, only ONE place was speaking truth to power. THE LIBERAL NETROOTS. 15 million people marched against the lies worldwide, and only on WE were covering it and talking about the shit intelligence.

When Mike Malloy played a solid 15 minutes of the sound of America bombing Baghdad in March 2003, it was pivotal. I was angrier than I had ever been before. It was time to get off my ass and do something.

And I was not alone anymore. . .

Like YOU I started a Blog PTS. I had more and more friends join in doing the heavy lifting with posts and troll watching.

Like YOU I was posting on, and commenting on other blogs. Getting connected.

Like YOU I volunteered for Dr. Dean, the only one with guts enough to call the Iraq war for the horseshit it was. Stumping in New Hampshire in my orange hat in the cold, Then helping Kerry.

Like YOU, I jumped on the phone to local and national media. Calling on them to REPORT dammit!

Like YOU, I wrote letters to the editor demanding truth.

Like YOU I called congress in the million phone march.

Like YOU I signed up for moveon.org, gave money, gave time.

We were looked down on and ignored by the entrenched Democrats and the media, and we suffered from growing pains. We just kept adding more voices. We kept our heads down.

And now lookee here . . . the biggest congressional turnaround in my lifetime. We accomplished something that it took the Rethugs 40 years to do, and we did it IN SIX YEARS.

Brothers and Sisters. We ARE America. We ARE the new Thomas Paines, the new Ben Franklins.

Got a minute? Remember November of 2000? Man, that time was just shit. Me? I had just spent 1 year doing 90 hour work weeks, and dropping every last dime I had (and then some!) helping to build a startup online business. Like many great companies we never received the second tranche of funding from our now skittish venture capitalists for marketing and operating that was expected the first two days of that month, and so it was over. We never opened a day for business. Out of work and in horrible debt. You wanna know something funny? 4th quarter 2006 was our projected first profitable quarter. Go figure . . .

Jobs were not so easy to find. Hiring freezes were everywhere, but I had a good buddy managing an upscale restaurant in Atlanta so I started waiting tables to keep the lights on in our little apartment my bride of one year and I shared.

Then that despicable, sickening, bullshit of a presidential election. Your gut remembers. . . The Brooks Brothers riot in Florida, James “the fixer” Baker, the Repubs running to the conservative-packed and therefore reliable, Supreme Court. The courts decision to stop counting the votes in Florida, and the installation of the Worst President Ever.

Worse, flipping through the news channels meant listening to the borg message. It was futile to resist. Every pundit was on board the wingnut train in 1st class. Radio was the same. Bush was a moderate. No liberal message ANYWHERE!

Sitting at the restaurant bar after a 14 hour day, the America that I grew up was unrecognizable. I felt alone. There were no liberals anymore.

Life changes. I found a decent job paying half of what I was making at the dot.bomb, but it was steady. And I had a great office looking out over the Chattahoochie river.

One early morning I watched a huge Russian cargo plane fly overhead bringing home the remains of that USAF surveillance plane that emergency landed in China. Wow . . . a RUSSIAN jet bringing pieces of an AMERICAN plane home and a corrupt American President kowtowing to China for hitting OUR plane! Why? So his Uncle Prescott could continue to make money?

Speaking of China, I got my $300 loan from them, which Bush described as a "Tax Cut" and the media raved about. Went right to the damn creditors.

One evening at home I on searched yahoo for “liberal radio” and “liberal website” on a whim.

The scales were removed from my eyes . . .

There were Liberals EVERYWHERE!

First up was IE America radio. When I heard Mike Malloy, I went nuts! This guy is saying what I am thinking! And it was streamed over the net and archived at whiterosesociety. WOO!

And the links! Bartcop, Atrios, MYDD (my due diligence back then) and more were jumping out every day. Next I knew I had 30 in my fav folder.

In the lead-up to Iraq, only ONE place was speaking truth to power. THE LIBERAL NETROOTS. 15 million people marched against the lies worldwide, and only on WE were covering it and talking about the shit intelligence.

When Mike Malloy played a solid 15 minutes of the sound of America bombing Baghdad in March 2003, it was pivotal. I was angrier than I had ever been before. It was time to get off my ass and do something.

And I was not alone anymore. . .

Like YOU I started a Blog PTS. I had more and more friends join in doing the heavy lifting with posts and troll watching.

Like YOU I was posting on, and commenting on other blogs. Getting connected.

Like YOU I volunteered for Dr. Dean, the only one with guts enough to call the Iraq war for the horseshit it was. Stumping in New Hampshire in my orange hat in the cold, Then helping Kerry.

Like YOU, I jumped on the phone to local and national media. Calling on them to REPORT dammit!

Like YOU, I wrote letters to the editor demanding truth.

Like YOU I called congress in the million phone march.

Like YOU I signed up for moveon.org, gave money, gave time.

We were looked down on and ignored by the entrenched Democrats and the media, and we suffered from growing pains. We just kept adding more voices. We kept our heads down.

And now lookee here . . . the biggest congressional turnaround in my lifetime. We accomplished something that it took the Rethugs 40 years to do, and we did it IN SIX YEARS.

Brothers and Sisters. We ARE America. We ARE the new Thomas Paines, the new Ben Franklins.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Yes, it seemed as if Texas was not only cut off from the country, but Amarillo was cut off from Texas, and there in that little room we were cut off from the entire world, starved for news, for oxygen, for any idea of what was going on anywhere except the shooting gallery on the other side of the wall.

But after Spacedark had left in justified frustration more people started to show, and once ABC finally began to broadcast the returns and the Senate and House seats began their Blue-shift, excitement began to build among the small band of citizens gathered in that little isolated room.

Texas stubbornly remained Red, not entirely surprising though hope springs eternal, and Amarillo remained most Red-faced of all. Though spirits were dampened by local losses, they were buoyed by party victories elsewhere in the nation, by Democrats on their way to regaining the House, and to coin a phrase, giving a “kick in the pants” to Republican senators who were so deserving of a resounding defeat.

Once ABC trundled out George Will to calm the quavering fears of a Republican nation, it seemed the Disney executives were quietly admitting the once slumbering peasantry were storming Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and the enchanted, fantasy charmed leadership inside. But as we have seen in our home state the Red barons are holding firm in their redoubts, and have the leaseholders still convinced that only they can keep them from being blown to bits, being taxed out of their homes or having immigrants take their jobs.

And why not? Just compare the pictures on-line at the Globe-News between the two Party parties. Look at the fabulous soirée the Republicans put on compared to the pitiful Democrats. What citizen wouldn’t support Ana and Mac just to bask in the safe warm glow of the big screen TV, or vote against single-member districts to beg a few scraps from the bounty of their table? It is a fine display brought to you courtesy of the Ambassador’s working wi-fi access -- for a fee.

As the evening drew to a close in that little room at The Big Texan some were choked up. Defeat has its sting no matter how great the gains made against the opposition. No doubt the victors heartily cheered and applauded across town in their grand salon. But there are now cracks in the gilded façade. While the oligarchs eat cake, nibble caviar and wash down crab canapés with champagne the fake Schloss Neuschwanstein around them begins to crumble, like the formidable Bastille, pulled down block by stubborn block.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Sadly, the Democratic Victory Party at the Big Texan turned out to be something of a dud. Not the "Democratic Victory" part . . . at this writing, it looks like Democrats would have some victories to celebrate, if they only knew about them.

If they only knew about them.

There's the rub. The local Dems promised a "watch party" at the Big Texan-- but forgot to ask if they'd be able to watch the results. Turns out the Big Texan doesn't have cable, so we winded up watching House -- not The House -- with the local-only results scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

We at PTS promised liveblogging-- but we did ask if the Big Texan could provide wi-fi. They told us "yeah, sure," and so we brought our laptops. Turns out the venerable restaurant bald-faced lied to us: their wi-fi "wasn't working...uh, sorry, dude."

VICTORY PARTYTONIGHT– Tues. Nov. 7Big Texan Steak House7 pm until closingParty includes a dinner buffet of Sliced smoked brisket, Silver Dollar ranch rolls and the necessary garnishes and condiments to make sandwiches to taste, Crudites and Big Texan Ranch Dip, Fresh Fruit with Pina Colada Dip, Assorted Cheeses and Homemade Brownies. Iced Tea, Water and Coffee is available all evening. Price of $9 per person also includes taxes and gratuity. There is a bar a few feet away for those interested. There will be tv in the room to keep up with events.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Chris Bell kicked off his statewide swing this morning at the Big Texan. I'd guess around 50 people showed up at 7:30am to hear him speak. He seemed to drift back and forth between well-rehearsed political stumping and a more casual style. It seemed to me he knew he was among friends this morning and we were there to thank him and wish him well on his trip around the state. Bell has been to Amarillo a number of times over the past year and half or so, and this was the third time I had the opportunity not only to hear him speak, but to shake his hand and look him in the eye. I feel honored for having had the opportunity to do so. He is a candidate we can all be proud of.

The event ended in what I found to be something of a surreal moment. Fellow PTS'er Iman was in attendance as well, and as we stood by our cars shooting the breeze Bell came outside and walked over to the Big Cow that stands guard at the front of the Big Texan. Most everyone else had left at that point, which was too bad, because if they had stayed they would have seen him stand there and smile for the camera, a light-hearted moment to be captured on film. I'm sure there's a metaphor in that moment, the man who would be governor grabbing the reigns of that over-sized, unyielding animal. I'll be glad to see him take the reigns of Texas.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to know what conservatism is and what it isn't you need only look at good ol' Amarillo. Sure, we have a lot of big-ass churches, but we also have plenty of liquor stores, strip clubs, divorce, adultery, drug abuse, theft, etc., etc., etc.... It isn't Amarillo's tiny liberal population that keeps all of that fueled. Never mind all that, the conservative authoritarian would say, the right is religious and the left is immoral. It would be nice to believe that recent revelations will do away with the nonsense that Republicans hold some kind of moral high ground, but I am not so optimistic. Why? Ron Suskind wrote in the New York Time Magazine on 10/17/2004:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Bodacious, former authoritarian troll on this blog, once quipped, that the facts don't matter. (See below) Perhaps it was an inadvertent admission, but it opens a window into the mind of the right-wing ideologue. The facts, and reality, are irrelevant.

It doesn't matter to the authoritarians that Rush Limbaugh is a thrice divorced pill popper who travels with a bottle of Viagra, but without a wife, to the Dominican Republic. It's the old-timey family values type he pretends to be that matters.It doesn't matter that the Republican Party protected a gay child sex predator among their ranks. It only matters that they publicly bash gays at every opportunity.It doesn't matter that the RNC takes money from porn distrubtors or that a porn star bought her way into the White House. It's their constant sermonizing against sexual immorality that matters.It doesn't matter that Bush recklessly made public detailed plans for building atomic weapons. He talks tough and acts like a cowboy, so only the Republicans can keep us safe.It doesn't matter that the economy really isn't doing all that great. Bush is the CEO president and he's going to run government like a business, even if that business was Enron.

And on, and on, and on...facts don't matter to the ideologues. They are all about style over substance, words over action, illusion over reality. Spacedark commented in an earlier post about looking to literature to help make sense of the world around us. For the most part I don't disagree with him, but I do have to point out one thing: had Oedipus been a Republican he simply would have denied Jocasta was either his lover or his mother, smeared anyone who said she was and cooked any intelligence that pointed to the truth.

I'm happy for this country to experience a sea-change on Tuesday. Hopefully, the optimism surging through the progressive movement will prove warranted, because I'm terrified of what might happen otherwise...

[Update 11/06/2006 9:25pm - Former Current authoritarian troll Bodacious has challenged me to provide a quote backing up my claim that he said the facts don't matter. Since I am unable to do so I will, with apologies, relieve him of the burden of responsibility for that statement and rephrase my assertion as such: I recall reading an exchange between a conservative blogger and one of his readers in which he said "the facts don't matter" or "I don't care about the facts." I am unable to provide a link however, so you will just have to take that with a grain of salt.]

Friday, November 03, 2006

I asked earlier what it must feel like to be a Republican in these days of schadenfreude and roses. I had in mind an earnest, sincere Republican (yes, I do believe that they still exist). A Values Voter, perhaps; a fag-basher, yes, but one who genuinely and honestly believes that fags should be bashed because Jesus said so. A person who fails to live up to—or even truly understand—their own religion, a person who is at bottom dead wrong about everything—but not a dishonest person.

Or perhaps a Security Mom, who genuinely believes that Omar Ali bin-Al Killya is going to blow up her children. Because Michelle Malkin said so. Again, she is dead wrong, but it didn't take brains to earn that Mrs. degree at the school she still spells "Texas Teck". And the frat boy she married says that the nice man George Bush is giving them a tax cut! In the end, her paranoia faces the wrong direction and she's a bit self-centered (but aren't we all?). She's not dishonest, not really.

Or, perhaps, a curious Texan. Who served in the military and defended American Values. But who is smart enough to understand that those American Values include freedom of expression. But who was indoctrinated to conservative values throughout his career. But who can see through some of that indoctrination. But who is frustrated that the liberals he debates refuse to get it. But who can see, on occasion, that they have a point. But who is also an evangelical, who sees them liberals throwing around the name of Jesus like he was just another philosopher! and being so dern unappreciative of the devotional links he forwards! But who also see those liberals respecting the philosophy of Christ, 'specially the Peace and Love part. Who is growing ever more confused.

So how does it feel? How would any among us, True Believers all in one way or another, feel to discover that our True Belief was tragically misplaced. How would I feel, to find that my leaders had feet of clay? Some of them do, to be sure, and it's always been disappointing to realize that. But how would I feel to go through what sincere conservatives and honest Republicans must be going through now, with leader after leader falling in—not just disgrace, but utter hypocrisy and smashed dreams.

Being who I am, I Truly Believe that there are times when only Literature can save us, when only the accumulated writings of the Best and Brightest authors from our shared history can explain the wrecked circumstances we find ourselves in. And in this case, at this strange place where all roads meet, I find that we must turn to Sophocles.

In short, such true Republicans must now feel like Oedipus felt at the moment of the most tragic of recognitions in all of literary history—when he realized in one crushing onslaught that he himself was the criminal that he was pursuing so adamantly; that he had, in fact, killed his father; that his incestuous carnal knowledge of his own mother had resulted in four doomed children-slash-siblings; that his mother-slash-wife, even now, lay hung by her own ropes, unable to face the tragic knowledge that he now must live with. That everything he was and everything he had stood for had led to his utter ruin.

Oedipus, at that moment, cried out for light—ironically, just before he extinguished his own light forever by poking out his eyes with Jocasta’s brooch. In another sense, he was crying directly to Apollo, the god of light, time, and fate, who had brought him to this crossroads. In yet another sense, Oedipus cursed the light, which represented—as always in literature—truth. Truth was something that rational Oedipus—who had once said “I will not listen; the truth must be made known”—could have, in the end, done without. The things we seek most ardently are all so often the things that destroy us—an eternal truth that the onetime admirers of Ted Haggard, Don Sherwood, and George Bush must be darkly reflecting on tonight at this lightless and pitiless crossroads.

The Burnt Orange Report has a nice summary of Greg Abbott's scandals. David Van Os said the Attorney General was "stealing the taxpayers' money" by using state employees and taxpayer money to create campaign commercials.

Almost lost in the shuffle: the AG Greg Abbott also attempted to steal money from the Sybil B. Harrington Living Trust here in Amarillo.

The short version of the story everyone knows: Ms. Harrington had stipulated that her money be spent in 28 Texas Panhandle counties, Travis County, and Maricopa County, Ariz., where she had lived out the last few years of her life. Abbott's office accused her trustees of sending too much money to Arizona. The dispute put a $650,000 donation promised to Ballet Arizona-- an innocent bystander in the dispute-- in limbo.

Trustees for the $100 million Sybil B. Harrington Living Trust will neither be barred from making further grants to Arizona charities nor forced to distribute the remaining $15 million according to a geographical formula.

District Judge Don Emerson ruled against the state's plea for an injunction to halt the flow of trust funds Thursday, just hours after testimony in a hearing wrapped up in 320th District Court.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

This should be fun!!! The press will probably be there so a good showing will resonate among the community....hence, a vote or two that we may not gotten otherwise.

All: Tim Hoffman and the Bell Campaign have asked that I set up an early morning breakfast on Monday, Nov. 6th. Chris is flying to Amarillo on Sunday night, and will start from Amarillo and go around the state with rally events before election day. I am proud that we will be FIRST.

Please put out a message with reminders until the 6th, that there will be a Chris Bell Breakfast Rally, Monday, November 6th at 7:30 am at the Big Texan on I-40.

They have a $7.95 Breakfast Buffet that everyone can go through the line and pay for their own meal. We have the meeting room in the back reserved for the rally.

We need as many people there as possible. Thanks for the all the help you can give to this. We also want to get out all the other local Demo candidates.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

If you are a progressive then there is little I need to say to convince you to vote for a Democratic candidate in the upcoming elections. If you are moderate, or even a conservative, who isn't happy with our country's current state of affairs, then I will give you one reason, and only one reason, you should vote Democratic as well: accountability. Under the topic of accountability I will address one candidate: Congressman Mac Thornberry. At best Thornberry is a rubberstamp Republican who has given the Bush Administration almost everything it has asked for, and has dissented only when it was safe to do so. At worst, he is an authoritarian neocon who shares the Bush Administration's reckless and dangerous ideology. Try as he may to pass himself off as just a down-home-cowboy-gone-to-Washington the reality is that he is a Good Ol' Boy who is blindly loyal to the Bush Adminstration.

If you want to know what really happened in Dick Cheney's super-secret Energy Task Force meetings, then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you want greater oversight of the hundreds of billions have been tossed into the Iraq War black hole, then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you want the Bush Administration to answer for their ill-conceived and ham-fisted prosecution of the Iraq War, then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you think the Bush Administration should be held accountable for violating the law rather than given a retro-active "get out of jail free card", then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you believe in the principals of "due process" and "habeas corpus", then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you think that the three branches of government are supposed to act as checks and balances against one another, then Mac Thornberry has to go.If you believe that the Constitution is something more than "just a goddamn piece of paper," then Mac Thornberry has to go.

The Democrats are poised to make big gains this election cycle, possibly even reclaiming both Houses of Congress. As satisfying as this would be the reality is that there probably won't be an immediate or dramatic change in course. The havoc wrought by the Bush Administration runs deep and will take decades to undo. If there is one thing the Democrats could do swiftly, effectively, and I think with great public support, it is to exercise the oversight of the Bush Administration that has been so sorely missed for the past 6 years. I cannot guarantee that a Democratic majority will force this president to account for his actions, but I can guarantee that it won't happen without one.

I don't say these thing because I am a hereditary Dem who supports the party soley for the sake of supporting the party. I'm aware of the fact that some Democrats have enabled this President's actions. I don't know why they did and I will not defend their doing so. The fact remains they are the only viable cure to the disease called Republicanism that is currently afflicting our country.

Roger Waun is the Democratic candidate for Texas Congressional District 13. A vote for Roger Waun will be a vote for a progressive philosophy. A vote for Roger Waun will be a vote for holding Bush accountable for his miserable and failed presidency.

. . . "I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?"

Local Right Wing Nuts Who Include Pictures of Themselves With Karl Rove on Their Blog

Reviews!

"expertly written" --Celtictexan

“Panhandle Truth Squad reads like a delicate crystal punch bowl filled with Bacardi 151, dropped from the Amarillo Club atop the Chase Tower downtown, and currently approximately .01 cm above the asphalt of Tyler Street, soon to shatter between a parked BMW and a speeding 1974 Chevrolet Vega.” –Chip Chandelier, Not a Globe-News reviewer